I don't know how
by Lady Bee
Summary: "I know it gotta stop love, but I don't know how." AU


_**I waited by your bedside,**__**  
**__**And didn't close my eyes all night.**__**  
**__**I named you like a prayer.**_

The stars shined in the sky like diamonds against dark blue velvet. A bright night filled with the scent of blooming flowers. The white door opened and he saw her getting out of the house after she hugged her mother. Her hair combed in a way that made her look older. Her dress was made of silver silk and let her shoulders bare. She looked to the right, just where his car was parked with all the lights turned off.

She knew he was there, watching in the dark as she entered someone else's car. She deserved some fun and he didn't have the right to stop her.

The red sport car followed the empty street as he remained behind trying to figure out what to do with his life now.

Girls wearing shining jewelry and high heels, young bodies in colorful dresses with flowers in their arms. Boys wearing smoking, trying to make a good impression on a date. Prom night was an attempt of making fairy tales real even if only for a brief moment. Sansa used to say that it was the best part of her high school years, but Arya couldn't understand her sister's reason for such excitement.

Gendry found them a table and talked none stopping about how beautiful she was. He was a nice guy and a hell of a quarterback, but she would rather see him playing for the school team than date him. By the end of the night she would know everything about how he was picked up by a headhunter and would attend college next year. How he planned to be a businessman and continued his father's business.

She tried to seem interested, to engage in a conversation or even dance with him. All the pretty girls in the prom couldn't take their eyes from him. Gendry was rather good looking and no doubt he could be more popular among girls if he wasn't so shy around them. He was supposed to be a great catch, the hottest guy in school, but not for her.

Arya could feel some sympathy toward him, enough to have him as a friend, but endure dating him. He could be the real life charming prince and she would still see him more like a landscape than a potential boyfriend. He wasn't her type after all.

"There's something wrong?" Gendry asked her while Arya looked at some couples dancing. He tried to hold her hand and Arya avoided the touch.

"Nothing." She said turning back to him. She was feeling terrible uncomfortable all dressed up in a way that even Sansa would have approved. "I was thinking about Jeyne Poole and how much makeup she must have put on her face tonight. If she smiles too much her face will crack, or if things get hot between her and Ramsay tonight her face will melt." Gendry laugh.

"Sure thing. Girls and make up, two things I better nerve try to understand." He said playfully. "But one thing I know. You look beautiful with all that…You know. Dress and stuff. I never saw you like this before." She tried to smile but it was getting faker by the hour. Gendry could be an incredible athlete but he had no creativity at all. She had lost count of how many times he made that same compliment to her. "Do you wanna dance?" he asked and Arya accepted the invitation. It was easier to dance than to talk with him.

It was supposed to be a fairy tale night but she never liked fairy tales. She closed her eyes and rested her head against Gendry's shoulder. He was had a muscular body and broad shoulders. It would be easier to stay with him, to be his girlfriend and let him dream about how they would attend college together. High School sweethearts…That was the easy and predictable path, the one she could follow with nearly no fear.

_**It's anybody's guess how,**__**  
**__**The angel of doubt came down,**__**  
**__**And crept into your bed.**_

The band played something slow. Gendry got her body closer and whispered to her ear how gorgeous she was, as he had done a thousand times before. Arya hoped he would not try to kiss her but she knew it was something unlikely.

The music stopped and Gendry stared at her eyes with anxiety and a bit of hope. He lowered his face, trying to get his lips close enough to her mouth, but Arya turned her face away.

"What's wrong?" He asked. She couldn't say if he was angry with her, or truly concerned with her, like everybody else seemed to be lately.

"I'm not feeling well." She said almost in a whisper. "I'm going home. I shouldn't have come here."

"I'll drive you home." He said in a practical tone, trying to be a good boy with good manners.

"You don't have to." Arya said, trying to avoid his company. "I don't want to spoil your night. Stay here, have some fun. I think I've seen a girl or two winking at you. You should give them a try." Arya said in attempt to change his mind, but Gendry was a stubborn guy.

"I don't want another girl. I want you." He sounded like a lost boy while he tried to hold her hand. Arya smiled at him in an effort of sympathy. He was really interested in her but she couldn't understand why. She was far from being the most beautiful girl in school and he had everything to be one of the popular guys.

"You are a nice guy. "She said. "It would be easy to be your girlfriend and say that I like you, but I can't." It was a sad truth. Gendry could be a good influence, someone to rely on and built a life with. Someone to heal her inside, but the thing about her kind of pain was that she learned to love it.

"You're seeing someone else?" He asked while they left the dance floor.

"It's complicated." She said feeling a knot in her throat. Gendry stopped and Arya looked at him before grabbing her things.

"It was because of this guy you did that?" She felt her blood run cold and her heart skip a beat. He was as uncomfortable with that question as her. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't ask you about these things." No, he shouldn't, but he did nonetheless. He asked the forbidden question, the one everybody tried to avoid since she came out of the hospital.

"It's ok. You are a really nice guy, but it wouldn't be fair to stay here and use you as my new therapy. Stay here and enjoy the party. I'm sure you'll be prom king." She said smiling at him but offering him no real answer.

"Are you sure you don't want me to drive you home?" He asked once more.

"I'm sure." Arya tried to sound as secure as she could.

"Don't do anything stupid, ok?" He asked before kissing her cheek. He was protective like Robb when she left the hospital. She could pretend he was like one of her older siblings. _Not like him, though._ "If you change your mind, you have my phone number."

She went out of the gymnasium, avoiding any kind of conversation or contact with the other kids. They looked at her as if they were trying to guess what had happened nearly two months ago, trying to conceal all the rumors about her.

Judgment looks weren't something new in her life. She had always been the weird girl wearing boys' clothes and people stared at her more often than not trying to guess if she was a lesbian or simply had no sense of style, but this time it was different. This time she was the girl with problems, enough to make cut her arms and paint the bathroom in blood red.

_**But after we danced to the shipping forecast,**__**  
**__**The words escaped your mouth:**__**  
**__**"i know it's gotta stop love, but i don't know how."**_

Arya walked down the street holding tightly to her shawl. The breeze was cool against her skin, soothing her worries as she walked alone. The distant sound of a car approaching didn't bother her. It was surely someone who left the prom early, or some couple trying to find a place to have a different kind of fun.

The car passed her by and stopped under a lamp post. Someone inside opened the door for her and it didn't take much for her to realize who was inside the car. Arya didn't know how to feel about it. It was both a relief and another reason for angst. She closed her eyes for a while and took a deep breath before accepting the ride.

She entered the car. Indie rock was playing on the radio, one of her favorite songs. The air inside was heavy, thick with truths unspoken and lies invented to spear both some pain. She wanted to ask what he was doing there when he was supposed to be on the other side of the country. Maybe she didn't have to ask. It was a classic symptom of that disease they shared.

He drove the car for a while until they got to a motel at the city borders. It wasn't hard to get a room, the difficult part was to bear the silence. He opened the door for her and both entered the room. It was as familiar as the smell of cookies on a Christmas morning.

"I thought you were at college." She said trying to not give up and cry.

"I tried to stay away, but it didn't work." He said sitting on the bed. "Can we talk now?"

"I don't think I have much choice in the matter." She said finally looking at him. "Why did you come back, Jon? I told you I didn't want to see you again."

"I needed to know about you. I couldn't focus in anything else since…Since that day." Jon answered as if it cost him ten years. The last time they talked she was nearly dead in a hospital bed. He was by her bedside, half asleep, holding her feeble hand. "I tried to call you but you wouldn't answer the phone. I called Bran and he told you came back home but you were still fragile after…Why, Arya?! For God's sake, tell me why you tried to do that?!" He finally lost it.

She lowered her face to stare at her shoes. Look at his face, full of pain and despair was too much for her to take. She was the one to tell him to go away and leave her be without a single explanation. She did what she must do to cover their secret, but Jon refused to understand that. Once he got over their first time together, he started to believe that it was possible to have a life with her. It was a dream, though. A bittersweet dream.

_**Now the stairs forget your shoes,**__**  
**__**And the gate don't creak for want of you.**__**  
**__**But the jury's out on me.**_

"I thought I could deal with it. I thought I would be ok after…Oh Jon, don't make me say it." She started to cry making Jon rise from the bed to hold her in his arms. Even now he was her safety island, even when he could barely stand up.

He kissed her forehead and caressed her hair tenderly.

"I never thought it would end up with you attempting suicide. I should have known. I should have done something about it before things got out of control." He held her tightly. "I should never…Oh God! I thought I would lose you for good."

"You don't have to blame yourself, Jon. We both agreed it was the best solution, the practical solution. Nobody could ever know what happened." She tried to calm him down. Jon lowered his eyes and looked to the scars on her pulse with disgust.

"It couldn't be the best solution if it leads you to such despair." He said touching the lines in her wrists. "I wish I knew what to do at the time. Maybe run away, maybe tell the truth. I don't know. Anything would be better than to leave you like this."

"They would try to separate us, maybe send you to prison. No, our options were too limited." She looked up to face him properly. "And I don't think I could bear being a mother at eighteen."

"Then tell me why? Why you thought that death was a solution? We got rid of our major problem now, no one would discover us. I thought you would be ok! You made me believe that!" Jon was getting more and more desperate while he talked. "Sansa got home early and found you unconscious on the bathroom floor. If you had stayed that way a little longer you would be dead now."

"Don't talk like this. Please, don't…" She was shaking in his arms and she was finally crumbling.

"I'm sorry." He said trying to calm her. "How can I make things right? How can I make you happy again?"

"I don't think there's a way. We knew this was wrong and we did it anyway. We always knew it would have to stop at some point." She said soberly as the tears ruined her make up.

"Don't say it. Please, don't…"He asked holding her tighter in his arms. "I can't stand without you."

"You went back to college and I couldn't go thru the loss and the secrets alone. I couldn't tell anyone and I got lonely and desperate. I missed you and I kept wondering what would have been if things were different until I got lost in sorrow." She said. "I tried to make myself believe it had to stop but the simple idea of you with someone else was too overwhelming."

"I have no one else but you." He confessed in a low tone, almost as if he was resented with her. "I admit it was shocking seeing you with that guy at the prom. I didn't like it. I didn't like to feel like a green eyed monster. I didn't like to be envious because he can show you around in his arms as if you were his trophy without being judged by everyone."

_**We're wise beyond our years,**__**  
**__**But we're good at bad ideas, my love.**__**  
**__**Or so it seems to be.**_

"Please. You can't be serious about it. Gendry is just a friend and a little disguise should be a good thing given the circumstances." She said in an annoyed tone. Jon could be very childish sometimes, but it wasn't the time for jalousie.

"You will keep dating him?" He asked abruptly.

"I don't know. I should date him, don't you think? It's the proper thing to do. The right thing. He is a nice guy, full of good intentions. He likes me and it would be easy path. No guilty, no secrets, no angst. Just a normal and healthy relationship for a change." She replied rashly. She didn't like how Jon got suspicious toward her acts and possessive about her.

"You are going to leave me than? Is that what you are trying to say?" Now he was sounding a bit desperate and skeptical. Arya closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Do you have any ideas about how to deal with all this mess?! I'm willing to hear any suggestions, but the truth is we have no options, Jon! Be reasonable for once!"

"Being reasonable near you?! I was never able to, and you know it, Arya! I've known it for a while now. It's either me or nothing! I won't cross my arms and wait for you to throw yourself of some random guy's bad! I won't give you up without a fight."

"Go ahead and tell me how this can go on without a great deal of pain for both of us?!" She said exasperated. "We are brother and sister, Jon! It started with curiosity, maybe with some empathy and fraternal love until it changed to something much more dangerous! Once you were the one to read me bedtime stories and kiss me goodnight, and now you are my secret affair, the guy who took my virginity and got me pregnant!"

"Tell me something I don't know. Do you really think that it doesn't torture me every day? Do you think it's being easy for me?" He said with a stern face. "It's maddening and sick, but I've made up my mind a long time ago, Arya. A life without you it's not one I'm willing to live."

"I don't know what to do anymore." She said while she sited on the bed. Her hands were shaking and she wanted to cry her heart out, but it wouldn't do them any good. Once he was the only one who could keep her calm and make her feel loved and protected. Nobody ever told her that she would need to be protected from him and their sick love.

"You don't love anymore, do you? Is it because of the baby?" He asked and she knew he was afraid of her answer. They held to each other in despair and need like shipwrecked, and it only made them drown quickly. "Tell me you don't love me anymore and I shall live you. Tell me I fucked it up when I convinced you to abort. Tell me I fucked everything and that you hate me for it. Maybe this way I can understand that there's no chance for us."

"Don't be so fucking melodramatic! If I didn't love you it wouldn't be so difficult to let you go. I hate you for being my brother. Maybe I hate you for being reckless that night and for convincing me to give up the only part of you I could ever hold close to my heart and say it was mine, but it had to be done. We fucked everything over and over. We did it together."

"Then stay with me. Don't shut me out of your life. It was our loss. We should be mourning it together, we should be supporting each other and I'm sorry for leavin you behind. I should have being here with you." He said while he sat near her. Jon held her tenderly and kissed her forehead. "I missed you, little sister."

That hurt more than she could say. Little sister…It was a bitter reminder of the past and the sin they shared. He always called her like that to make her feel loved and cared for. Jon had always been lonely in the house, very much like her. The same colors and features. The same grey eyes and dark hair. The outcast kids in the Stark family. Maybe it was their mutual understanding what leaded them to each other's arms. Maybe it was the loneliness and the shared fear of rejection.

_**Shine a little light,**__**  
**__**Don't wrestle with the night,**__**  
**__**Don't think about the future now.**__**  
**__**I know it's gotta stop love but i don't know how.**_

She rested her head against his shoulder while Jon took of the pins from her hair, letting it fall loose over her shoulders. He liked to muss her hair since they were children. The meaning of the gesture changed drastically along the years. From gentle touches and caresses to something more alluring. It had and erotic appeal and she liked the sensation of his fingers running thru her hair and massaging her scalp making her shiver.

Jon lowered his face, their noses almost touching. He pulled her chin up to make her look at him. She knew what would come next and she didn't have to wait long. It was an addiction what they had. Something beyond control and reason. Jon's lips were very eloquent when pressed against hers. His kisses used to be unsure and gentle, but after a while they changed into something more demanding and urgent. He had to have as much of her as he could get before the time was over, before anyone find out, before the inevitable separation.

She shouldn't play along so easily with his desires and lustful touches. His hand held her by the nape, forbidding her to end the kiss. His tongue danced around hers and his teeth bitted her lower lip sensuously. He tasted of guilty and grieve, passion and sin.

Jon's hand was at her nape while the other traveled over her curves. She could feel how he was trying to make her calm down and allow him to have her for the night as he had before. Arya knew him all too well to believe it was the only thing he wanted from her. He wanted to erase the past and their shared blood, to forget how he entered that damn clinic holding her hand as if he was trying to say that everything would be okay. He mourned their child as much as she did, but he chose the silent way to demonstrate it and sometimes it Arya felt terribly abandoned in her grieve.

His hands touched her neck and shoulders, sliding the stripes of the dress to uncover her breasts. Jon kissed her more gently while he touched the exposed flesh. Tear in her eyes revealed the sorrow and how much she needed him at that moment. Arya prayed for his kissed to wash over the pain she fell nearly all the time. She needed him to be strong now. Her big brother, her stronghold, her trustful lover.

Jon's hands were gentle, and his fingers touched her scars as if they touched a holy figure in a church. He kissed the thin lines on her wrists, and licked the tear in her cheeks. His grey eyes were like the sky announcing a storm. She could see them holding the tears as the sky holds the rain as much as possible before give in to an unforgiving weather.

He needed her to be strong too.

That was how their love worked. To protect her, Jon would do nearly anything, even kill. To protect him, she would do just the same. If they had to be separated at some point, then it would be only by death and even so there was always the possibility that the one who was left behind would soon follow the other.

He nearly lost his mind when he heard about her suicide attempt. He could still hear his own steps on the hospital's hallway, running to get to her room. He could see her in the back of his mind, laid on a hospital bed, pale like a corpse, with bandages around her wrists. He could feel her hand in his hand when they went to the clinic and how scared she was.

Arya had always been the only thing in his life worth fighting for, where his loyalty laid, where his heart rested. He could deal with anything, but loose her. It was why he came back, why he was willing to do anything. It wasn't for the sex or the pleasure she never failed to give him. It wasn't for revenge or rage against their family and destiny. It wasn't for anything, but her.

There wasn't malice and lust in their caresses until there was. He never knew when she changed until she did. He never understood his feelings until he was utterly in love with her. He never figured out how bad things could get until he had to accompany her to make an abortion, and saw her on a hospital bed after trying to open her wrists with a knife.

How bad she wanted to leave him…How bad he wanted her to never do it.

_**My little one,  
My kettle drum,  
I know i had a message at the start.**_

_**My babel tongue,  
My come-undone,  
I know i had a message at the start.**_

Sex was the only way to tell him she was still there. Breathing, heart beating, face blushing, mouth open, fingers entangled, voice moaning, alive and loving him still, despite of everything. Arya was his…His secret, addiction, desire, comfort, confident…Arya was everything he loved and longed for.

He trusted in her more strongly than he should, making her cry out in a mixture of pleasure and complain. Her legs were widely spread for him, giving Jon all the freedom to move as he pleased. It was far from good at the beginning. Both were tense and Jon was being rougher than usually. He was afraid and scared. Above all he was angry with her for being so selfish.

Gradually their bodies found the usual synchrony and Arya relaxed as Jon became more attentive to her needs and lowered the rhythm.

Soon enough their bodies were naked and exhausted from all the effort and love making. They were staring at each other's eyes, looking for reassurance and acceptance. None of them was willing to break the silence to say the inevitable.

"This was probably a bad idea." He was the one to say it just before kissing her once more.

"We were always good at bad ideas." She answered. "You always played along with my bad ideas well enough."

"As you always played along with mine." He said while she rested her head on his chest. "I wish I knew how to go on with this. I wish you to stop trying to get rid of me." He said in a low voice, hugging her tighter. "I'm not letting you go. I'm not going anywhere without you."

"I love you. You know I do." She said.

"But…" He waited for her answer.

"But it has to end at some point." She concluded. "How much more we can go on with it? How much longer until something really bad happens?"

"How worst this can get, Arya?" He said looking at the roof. "I've already lost a child, because we agreed it was too risky, I nearly lost you when you attempted suicide, and a few hours ago I thought I was losing you to someone else. This is a living hell already. I can't imagine how things can get worst and even if they do get worst I'll fight as long as you say that you love me."

"You are pathetically romantic sometimes." She said as if she was giving up. "I wish it could become true." She said as a stubborn tear fell from her eye.

"What?"

"A happy ending." The answer came in a whisper. "I wish we could have a happy ending."

"I fear that happy endings weren't meant for couples like us. These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume." He spoke the lines as if he was both performing and meaning every word. How sad it was their story, saddest than Juliet's and her Romeo.

"It would be much easier if we were from rival families. We could run away and marry in secret. We could fake a death scene or maybe convince our parents to end the quarrel. I wish you were born from my pure hate instead of my own blood." She kissed his mouth lightly. "If we are indeed made of fire and gunpowder, for God's sake let us consume our fate violently. Let this sinful and violent delight have its violent end."

Jon let those words take root inside of him. He rose from the bed and searched inside his pockets for something she didn't know until she saw the small flask in his hand.

"What is it?" She asked.

"My practical solution." He said calmly with a smile.

_**My prison kiss,**__**  
**__**My dying wish,**__**  
**__**I know i had a message at the start**__**  
**__**But it up and abandoned us, when we were sleeping in our beds.**_

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

There was no letter or suicidal note in the room when the police arrived. Her body rested on top of his and both had blissful expressions on their faces. It took some time until the authorities identify the bodies and the news would have choked the whole city if Eddard Stark hadn't avoided the dreadful tale to become public.

The memorial service was a terrible affair. None of the presents knew what to do or say given the circumstances. Cat spat in Jon's peaceful face and cried hysterically for her dead daughter. The hypothesis of rape was discarded immediately but Mrs. Stark insisted on saying that it was what happened. Sansa was choked as she held her mother's hand. Bran was trying to figure it out as everyone else while Rickon was kept out of the matter.

Strange as it may seem, Eddard Stark stud between both coffins, holding Arya's diary, without a word of desolation or anger. He found the diary under her bed while she was still in the hospital after her first suicide attempt. When Jon left the house after a brief visit, Mr. Stark found it odd that his illegitimate son would go away so soon with his favorite sibling still in the hospital. It was when Ned figured that something was wrong between them.

At first he thought just like Cat. He thought the worst about Jon and blamed him for some dreadful act against Arya until he found her diary. There were her motives and her feelings. All about their secret.

He was disgusted with every word in it and could barely believe that something like that was happening for so long under his roof. Sad and sinful as it was, Arya and Jon were in love with each other since God knows when. Madly and desperately in love to the point of committing the most stupid things.

First her unplanned pregnancy and the abortion. Her despair at the thought of losing Jon for good and the loneliness she felt when he went to college. The depression was inevitable, her despair was in every single word. She wrote him a note dated from the day before she tried to kill herself. Her last words would always be for him.

Ned knew it for quite a while. He had the power to stop all the tragedy, but choose to do nothing but send Jon away. He hoped that the distance would put an end to all the madness. He should have sent them away; somewhere they could pretend they were not siblings and live a peaceful live, despite any moral issues. They would still be damned, but they would be alive.

Despite Catlyn's complains, Jon and Arya were buried side by side in the Stark crypt. Their names carved in marble along with Arya's last words meant to him, saved in her diary.

"_I know it's gotta stop love, but I don't know how." _

_**It's anybody's guess how the angel of doubt layed down**__**  
**__**Sand beneath our house.**__**  
**__**I know it's gotta stop love, but i don't know how.**_

_**Author's Note: When I heard "New Ceremony" the idea for this fanfic came like a bullet thru my brain. I didn't intent it to be so dramatic. Generally I go for happy endings and stuff but this time it didn't seem plausible. I thought about Romeo and Juliet, the classic love story between members of rival families. Despite the tragedy of the story, it is still easier being from rivals families than being from the same family. I hope you like this one.**_

_**Bee**_


End file.
